release
by legi0nn
Summary: There was only one problem, Chell won't let go. Chell/Wheatley.


**release_**

The sheer momentum of the gravitational pull from the gaping hole was enough to pull her forward. Her arms flailed, trying to find something, anything that would keep her from shooting into the vast void of space. Then, her hands found something. Supported by a single wire dangling in the storm, Wheatley's voice filled her ears. Chell gripped the core's handles tighter. The rumble in her ears drowned the AI's pleas, and she could see him trying to gain control, trying to pull himself in.

"Let go!" the faint scream managed to find its way into her ears, "I can still fix this! I can still pull myself in!" Wheatley cried.

Chell didn't let go. She couldn't. She wouldn't. She was angry. Angry that the desperate personality core she now clung onto, was not the same innocent moron that had awoken her from her slumber. The moron who's British accent encouraged her to keep going, that she could escape and defeat him when he had become corrupted. Well, she had beaten him at his game and now they were in space, fighting against the piercing winds of the pull. Chell could already imagine spiraling into the far reaches of the universe if the wire holding her and Wheatley were to snap loose.

She felt light headed. It must be the exposure to the moon's different gravitational mass. She's heard about people from the past who had exposed themselves in space gravity. Didn't their heads explode? Chell's forgotten. After six hundred years in stasis she was bound to have picked up brain damage. It surprised her that she could still walk and hold something as heavy as the portal device. Then again, it might just be the technology of the twenty-third century. The scientists surely put something in her system before the apocalypse happened, otherwise she'd very well be dead due to the lack of nutrition for so many decades.

"I already fixed it, and you are not coming back." that second voice. She recognized that voice. It was GLaDOS.

Before Chell could get herself together again, there was a snap and her vision spun. She closed her eyes - this was the end.

"Let him go!" GLaDOS' synthetic voice alerted her. Let who go? Wheatley! She was still holding onto him, which explains the strain in her arms, having nearly been ripped out of their sockets. GLaDOS had managed to grab her ankle in time, but there was no doubt that the main core wasn't about to let the traitor back through the portal. Not in a million stellar cycles, Chell knew. There was only one problem, Chell wasn't planning on letting him go. GLaDOS can threaten to send them both to space and still Chell would refuse to let go.

"No don't!" Wheatley cried, "I never meant any harm, it was all science! Arghh no, that's not what I meant. It's her body, not me. You can understand that, can't you?"

"At least you managed to learn how to lie from all that reading, you moron."

Of all the times to start fighting, it had to be when the three of them were between the earth and the moon. The only way back to their home planet was through a portal, barely holding them together and GLaDOS and Wheatley were rambling. If she could, Chell would tell them to sort the problem out later, but what was a mute girl to do?

GLaDOS gave a robotic grunt as she gave in. She should have expected this, Chell being too forgiving. The mute lunatic clearly had no intention of releasing the moronic intelligence dampening sphere and GLaDOS herself knew it. It just took her a few nanoseconds to admit that even the dumbest moron deserved a second chance. Not for her, but for Chell. Humans are weird. What was it that keeps them from ridding of a potential threat? The solution to any core problem is usually the easiest one; eliminate the malfunction. And yet Chell wouldn't let go. The girl must truly have brain damage.

She immediately shut the portal offline to prevent anymore objects from rocketing out to space.

For the first time in days, Chell felt satisfied. Tired, but satisfied that her hardwork had paid off. Her blue eyes wandered off, and the last thing she remembered before blacking out was GLaDOS giving her a look of concern, and Wheatley's voice whispering, "I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry Chell."


End file.
